The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes

by Diane Chamberlain

  “That beautiful hair,” one of the women said to her the first day she met them. “It’s a shame you’ll have to cut it.”

  Eve sat on a bench near the swings, gently moving the carriage back and forth. “Why will I have to cut it?” she asked.

  The other women chuckled over whatever motherhood secret they shared. “It’ll get in your way, you’ll see,” one of them said. “It gets pulled and tangled and you just won’t have time for it anymore.”

  Eve looked from one woman to another. They all had short hair. “Did y’all have long hair before you had babies?” she asked.

  “I did,” one said.

  “Me, too,” said the blondest of the bunch.

  “Oh, you had gorgeous hair!” another said to the blonde.

  The blonde shrugged. “Your priorities change when you have a baby,” she said.

  “Well, I think Eve can keep her hair if she wants,” Marian said. She was pushing the twins on the swings and keeping one eye on the four-year-old, who was playing on the slide with another little girl.

  She had to keep it. If Tim were able to track her down, she wanted him to find her with the hair he loved.

  At three o’clock the following morning, though, she was walking around the dark bedroom with Cory on her shoulder, bleary-eyed. The baby was having a fitful night, a rarity for her, and Eve was upset that she couldn’t find the cause. Cory strained against her shoulder, arching her back and tangling her hand in a hank of Eve’s hair. Suddenly she let out a wail so loud it hurt Eve’s ears.

  “What’s wrong, Sweet Pea?” Eve asked. “You pulled my hair. I’m the one who should be crying.” Maybe her diaper was wet again? She carried the baby into the nursery, laid her down on the changing table, then turned on the lamp in the corner. Cory’s diaper was dry, but in the lamplight, Eve saw a small cut, like the fine red line of a paper cut, in the delicate skin between her thumb and index finger. “You cut yourself on my hair!” she said. “Poor baby.” She lifted her up and cuddled her, holding Cory’s little hand to her lips to kiss it better.

  Once she’d gotten Cory back to sleep, she went into the hallway bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. All she could find in the drawers beneath the sink were cuticle scissors, but she didn’t hesitate, and it took her only fifteen minutes to turn herself from Tim’s girlfriend to Cory’s mother.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What did you do?” Marian was sitting in the living room watching the Today Show the following morning, and her mouth dropped open when Eve carried the baby into the room.

  Eve glanced at the TV, where Jane Pauley was interviewing Barry Manilow. She smiled as she sank into the sofa. “The women at the park were right,” she said.

  Marian was speechless, her hand over her mouth.

  “Does it look that bad?” Eve asked as she slipped the nipple of the bottle into Cory’s mouth.

  “Oh…well, oh my,” Marian stammered. “It’s just such a shock.”

  It had been a shock to Eve that morning as well. She’d forgotten her middle-of-the-night haircut until she walked into the bathroom and saw the pile of dark hair on the counter near the sink. It took courage to look in the mirror. Her hair, once a long, wavy, wild, dark mane, was now a short, wavy, wild, dark mess. Cuticle scissors had clearly been a poor choice for the job. She stared at herself, waiting to cry, but she didn’t. Nothing she could do about it now.

  “Cory cut her hand on my hair last night, so I chopped it off,” Eve said.

  Marian laughed. “She cut her hand on your hair?”

  Eve held the baby’s little hand in her fingers. The cut was now barely visible. “Like a paper cut,” she said.

  Marian shook her head. “You are something else. Do you want…” She laughed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But let’s get an appointment with the woman who does my hair. Just to—” Marian touched her own neat white pageboy “—you know. Smooth it out a bit?”

  “I used cuticle scissors.” Eve grinned, and it felt strange, as though her grinning muscles had atrophied during the past few weeks. She would like to have someone cut her hair properly, but she also wanted to buy a little car seat for Cory. Two of the women at the park told her it was dangerous to keep a baby in the laundry basket in the car and that they sold these new padded, plastic baby seats at Kmart for twenty dollars. She’d bought gas and formula and more disposable diapers, and her hundred dollars was fast disappearing. If it was a choice between one of those car seats and a new haircut, there was no contest.

  “Well, you let me know if you want an appointment,” Marian said. “My treat.”

  “Thanks,” Eve said. She looked down at Cory, who was staring up at her. “She does this all the time now,” she said to Marian. “Stares at me. I love when she—” She stopped talking and looked at the TV. Someone had said the words “Gleason” and “break in the case.”

  “She’s starting to recognize you now,” Marian said, but Eve barely heard her as she leaned toward the TV.

  A policeman was on camera, speaking into a bank of microphones. “Yes,” he said in response to a question Eve had missed. “We spoke with Timothy Gleason’s girlfriend, who had initially been hesitant to come forward.”

  “What?” Eve asked out loud.

  “She’s a reluctant witness, but she did lead us to a house in Jacksonville, where the Gleason brothers made their calls to Governor Russell. We found evidence that they’d been there, but they’re not there now. And there’s no sign at all of Mrs. Russell having been there.”

  “Does the girlfriend know where Mrs. Russell is?” The voice came from somewhere off-camera.

  “She denies knowing where Mrs. Russell was held and where she might be now.”

  Without warning, Tim and Marty’s pictures were flashed on the screen. “Timothy and Martin Gleason are probably traveling under assumed names and may have altered their appearances,” the newscaster said. He gave a phone number viewers could call with more information.

  Eve forgot to breathe. She stared at the TV. The picture of Tim was one she’d seen in the mansion. He was smiling, shirtless, and a little younger than he was now. Although you couldn’t tell from the close-up on the television screen, he was sitting on a beach. His curly hair was washed almost to white by the sun. And those clear green eyes! She’d almost forgotten them.

  She started to cry, doing her best to keep her tears silent. She felt Marian’s gaze on her as the older woman stood up to turn off the television. Marian sat down again, hands locked around her knees.

  “I don’t want to know your connection to what we just saw,” she said quietly. “But I can tell you something about me.”

  Eve looked at her, waiting.

  “My husband went to jail in 1960 for a murder he didn’t commit,” Marian said. Her voice was tight. “There were witnesses who swore he was at the scene and that they even saw him do it, but I am completely certain it was a case of mistaken identity. Yet no one could verify his alibi because he was asleep in a hotel at the time, so he was convicted. And he was executed in 1966.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eve whispered.

  “I joined SCAPE after that,” Marian said, and Eve looked up sharply. “No one around here knows that. My friends and neighbors always believed Jim was innocent, but they didn’t know I became an activist. SCAPE was instrumental in getting rid of the death penalty several years ago. Of course, it’s back now.” Marian shrugged. “Anyway, that’s my story. I try to help out when I can.”

  Eve didn’t know what to say. She was still lost in Tim’s face and confused by the officer’s allusions to his “girlfriend.”

  “Just tell me this,” Marian said gently. “Was one of them…one of the Gleason brothers…Cory’s father?”

  Eve looked down at the infant in her arms. She nodded as if she really believed it.

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “I keep thinking he’ll find me somehow. I keep thinking I see his van on the street. When it’s not him, I…”
She shook her head. “And they said they talked to his girlfriend. I’m his girlfriend.”

  Marian held up a hand. “First, they’ll say anything to get what they want. They’re probably just trying to flush you out of wherever you’re hiding. Second, and more important,” Marian said, wearing a serious expression behind her glasses, “we’re having a conversation we shouldn’t be having. You need to be more careful. It was obvious to me you had some connection to that situation, but you can’t be so obvious with other people, all right?”

  Eve nodded.

  “You jump every time my front doorbell rings, and now I understand why. You should be a little paranoid. You’ll never know who to trust, so don’t trust anyone. A friend can become a foe, and it’s not just you who’s at risk.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s Tim and Marty and their sister. And Na—” She caught herself. “The people who helped me get to you.”

  “And you’ve got me to protect, too, now,” Marian said. “I’m aiding and abetting. So never a word to anyone, for as long as you live. Promise?”

  Eve nodded again, then looked at the dark television screen. “Do you think I’ll ever see him again?” she asked.

  “I know your heart must be broken, Eve, but it would be a mistake for him to try to find you or vice versa. He can only put you and your baby in danger, and I’m sure he knows that. So, no matter how much he loves you, he shouldn’t try to find you. For your sake and Cory’s.”

  She had not thought about it that way, that he would stay away to protect her. She bubbled up with love for him all over again.

  “I just wish I could help him somehow,” she said. Cory grew fussy on her lap and she lifted her to her shoulder, patting her back.

  “The best way you can help is to raise his child well,” Marian said. “Which brings me to our next topic.”

  “What?” Eve asked.

  “You need to get a job.”

  “But…you need me here.”

  Marian smiled. “I’ve done this work for over ten years without you, honey. You’re a huge help, but I don’t need you. What’s important for your future is that you start becoming Eve Bailey. You need to build a work record under that name.”

  That was exactly what Naomi had told her.

  “I know it’s only been four weeks since you gave birth,” Marian said, “but you seem to be in good shape, so I think you’re ready for a little part-time work. I’ve talked to a friend, Steffi Green, who manages the University Diner on the Corner. That’s where the UVA students hang out. They can use a waitress for their evening shift. It’d be from six to ten. Just four hours, at least in the beginning. Do you think you could handle that?”

  “But…what about Cory?”

  “Hi, there!” Marian waved her hand as if in greeting. “Remember me? I’ll take care of her. My day-care kids’ll be gone and it will just be Cory and me.”

  Eve rested her cheek against the baby’s head. “I don’t think I can leave her,” she said. “Even with you.”

  “I insist, Eve,” Marian said firmly, the drill sergeant in her voice. “Not just because you can use the money, but because you need to get out. You need to make friends and have something to think about besides Cory and this—” she waved toward the television “—her father. You need to start a life, honey. All right?”

  She nodded. “I should pay you rent if I have a job,” she said, then immediately wondered if Marian wanted her to get a job so she’d be able to leave. Maybe her revelation that she knew Tim Gleason had frightened her. “If I can still stay here, I mean,” she added.

  “You can stay here as long as you want,” Marian said. “And you can pay me one fourth of the utilities, if that will make you more comfortable. How’s that?”

  Eve’s eyes filled again. “It’s good,” she said.

  Marian got to her feet. “And now,” she said, heading for the telephone, “we’re going to make an appointment for a haircut.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three days after Christmas, Eve drove through a snow flurry to the University Diner for her first evening at work. Holiday decorations hung from the lamp posts along Main Street and the town was dark and quiet. She was glad she was starting back to work during winter break. The diner would be less crowded, letting her ease into the transition from warming bottles to making milk-shakes.

  Cars lined the curb in front of the diner and she groaned. Parallel parking. The one driving skill that nearly destroyed her chance for a North Carolina driver’s license. There was a single tiny opening between the parked cars, about a block from the diner. She struggled with the gear shift, rolling the car backward and forward until her palms grew sweaty on the steering wheel and she finally gave up. Already five minutes late, she drove several blocks away to find a spot she could pull into nose first, then ran through the blustery snow toward the diner. This was not a good start.

  She was breathless by the time she reached the diner. As she opened the front door, a gust of wind tore it from her hands and sent it crashing against the exterior wall with a bang. Customers, some seated at tables, others at the counter, looked up at the sound, and a tall, young waitress stopped pouring coffee to gawk at her.

  “Damn,” the waitress said. “Make an entrance, why don’t you.”

  Eve felt herself blush at the sudden attention. The customers, most of them students, smiled and went back to their conversations as the waitress set down the coffeepot and walked toward her.

  “Are you Eve?” she asked. “Please tell me you’re Eve.” She had very short blond hair and enormous brown eyes, and she wore a white bib apron over a red jersey and jeans.

  “I am,” Eve said.

  “Hooray and hallelujah!” The woman grabbed her arm and walked with her through the diner at a quick pace. “We’re so short today,” she said, her accent almost Tar Heel thick. “There’s five of us in the evenings, but one has a bug and another’s on vacation and even though we’re not as busy as we could be, I swear I’m about to quit. I’m Lorraine, by the way. I’m, like, your supervisor, but don’t sweat it, ’cause as long as you work your butt off, I don’t care what else you do.”

  Eve smiled. “I can do that.” She liked Lorraine already.

  “You have experience?” From beneath the counter, Lorraine grabbed an apron like the one she was wearing and handed it to her.

  “Uh-huh.” Eve pulled the apron over her head. “In Chapel—” Damn! “In Charleston,” she said.

  “Anywhere near a college?”

  “Right near one,” she said, wondering if there were any colleges in Charleston.

  “Cool. Then you know waiting on students is the least rewarding, most degrading and best possible job there is.”

  Eve laughed. “Right,” she said. She glanced toward the far corner of the diner as if expecting to see Tim there, waiting for her to pour his coffee, but the corner booth was empty.

  Lorraine followed her gaze. “It’s winter break, now, so don’t start thinking it’s always this leisurely in here.”

  “Are we close to the campus?”

  “Very,” Lorraine said. “But don’t call it the ‘campus.’ No one does. It’s the grounds.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “You and I have the counter tonight,” she said, “so let’s get to it.”

  Working felt good. Once she learned what a “grills-with” was—a doughnut cooked on the grill, then topped with ice cream—she had the job down. She was quick and efficient behind the counter, and it had been over a month since she’d felt that sort of confidence. The students were friendly to her, and she had the same feeling she’d had in Chapel Hill—a longing to be one of them.

  Except for the times she imagined Tim coming to find her, she was glad she’d cut her hair. Marian’s hair-dresser had created a soft, chin-length bob with deep bangs that were a challenge to keep straight, but she felt freer and lighter as she moved around the diner, and she knew the shorter hair made her look at least a year or two older
.

  The only hard part of the evening was being away from Cory. If she hadn’t realized how attached she’d become to the baby, she certainly knew it now. Halfway through her shift, she used the phone in the diner’s kitchen to call Marian to check on her.

  “Everything’s fine,” Marian said. “Now go back to work.”

  Lorraine chatted with her as they set plates on the counter and scooped ice cream onto fried doughnuts. She was a third-year student at the university, a twenty-year-old journalism major from Galax, wherever that was, and she’d worked at the diner for two years. She was irreverent, straightforward and unpretentious, all qualities Eve appreciated in her.

  “Steffi said you have a baby,” Lorraine said as they stood side by side, cutting whole pies into wedges.

  “Uh-huh,” Eve said. “Cory.”

  “Did your boyfriend give you that crap about withdrawal working or what?”

  Eve laughed. “Exactly,” she said.

  “My girlfriend got that line, too.” Lorraine licked a bit of cherry-pie filling off her thumb. “Her little girl’s four now. I live with them.”

  “How old was your friend when she had the baby?”

  “Nineteen,” Lorraine said. “And you’re…?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Ouch. Marian’s taking care of her while you work, huh?”

  “Yes. You know Marian?”

  “Everyone knows Marian. She’s saved my butt once or twice.”

  Eve wanted to know how Marian had helped her, but it felt like prying.

  “As a matter of fact,” Lorraine continued, “Shan—my girlfriend Bobbie’s little girl—is one of her day-care kids.”

  “Oh!” Eve held the knife in midair, thinking of the well-behaved four-year-old who came to the house every day. “She’s adorable,” she said.